Prioritized resource assignment for mobile cellular communication systems with mixed services and platform types

The proliferation of mobile, portable, and personal communication systems will bring a variety of offered services. Practical systems that are envisioned must support different types of calls. These may include voice only, mixed voice and data, high-speed data, low-speed data, image transmission, and an array of intelligent network services. In addition there may be a mixture of platforms (such as persons, autos, buses, trains, boats, and planes) having a range of mobility characteristics. In such environments, the bandwidth and/or resources needed for different call sessions will not be identical. As a result, calls will generally encounter different blocking and hand-off constraints. These effects are in addition to differences in blocking and forced (call) termination probabilities that are attributable to differing platform mobilities and (resource) channel quotas. Cellular systems with mixed platforms that support calls with differing resource requirements are considered. Loss-type systems and hybrid delay-loss systems are treated. In each case, priority access to resources for hand-off calls is allowable. We identify a suitable state characterization and framework for a performance analysis that enables numerical computation of theoretical performance results. Example performance characteristics are obtained. These show carried traffic, blocking probability, and forced termination probability for each platform type and for each call type.